{"id":185,"date":"2017-12-12T08:17:23","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T08:17:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.doinghistime.org\/index.php\/2017\/12\/12\/2017-12-jesus-aint-santa-claus\/"},"modified":"2022-07-19T19:05:32","modified_gmt":"2022-07-19T23:05:32","slug":"2017-12-jesus-aint-santa-claus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.doinghistime.org\/blog\/2017-12-jesus-aint-santa-claus\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus Ain\u2019t Santa Claus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>We all have a need to feel connected to another human being. Good marriages thrive on communication. Without daily sharing, one partner feels disconnected and alone. Suicides occur when people lose all loving contact with another human being. In our daily friendships, we require connection to each other. The people with whom we eat lunch or work out with, offer us a sense of community that\u2019s vital to mental health and happiness.<br>But sometimes spouses or friends abuse that connection by using us for their own selfish, personal advantage. Some of us have been ripped off by a \u201cfriend\u201d who stole from us to feed her habit. Perhaps we\u2019ve done it to someone else. Any betrayal damages trust, but it also makes it less likely that we\u2019ll offer that gift of connection again. Think about how we treat God and the connection He offers us through the intimacy of prayer. Don\u2019t we often bring our own selfish wish list to our prayers? Don\u2019t we often consider God a sort of Santa Claus and try to make deals with Him? And then we wonder why our prayers never seem to get an answer! Consider what James said about that, <em>\u201cWhen you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. James 4:3 <\/em>Prayer is not a way to get our wish list completed. Jesus is not our gofer who is just about giving us what we want!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rather, and more important, prayer is a direct link to the Creator of the universe. He has a plan for our lives, but like most plans, He needs to share them with us. Without our willingness to put aside our selfish concerns and really be quiet and listen to God speaking to us, we\u2019ll never learn what He wants to say to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we pray, let\u2019s connect to God by using our ears first and our mouths second. Let\u2019s keep our motives pure and ask God for the things we need so that we can serve Him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We all have a need to feel connected to another human being. Good marriages thrive on communication. Without daily sharing, one partner feels disconnected and alone. Suicides occur when people lose all loving contact with another human being. In our daily friendships, we require connection to each other. The people with whom we eat lunch or work out with, offer &#8230; <\/p>\n<div><a href=\"https:\/\/www.doinghistime.org\/blog\/2017-12-jesus-aint-santa-claus\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,27],"tags":[49,44,50],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doinghistime.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doinghistime.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doinghistime.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doinghistime.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doinghistime.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.doinghistime.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1270,"href":"https:\/\/www.doinghistime.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions\/1270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doinghistime.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doinghistime.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doinghistime.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doinghistime.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}